Black Elites and the Racial Politics of Immigration

Emory University, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

This project address the following questions: How do Black leaders respond to immigration? Do they view immigrants as labor-market competitors or as potential allies for their primary constituents? Do they tend to support restrictive or more liberal immigration policies? The principal investigators answer these questions in two ways. First, using new and comprehensive data on state immigration laws and legislative behavior from 2005 to 2020, they analyze whether and under what conditions Black legislators oppose or support particular kinds of immigration bills, and compare their stance to that of their white and Latino colleagues. Second, they apply big data statistical methods to over 80,000 immigration-related articles in the Black, Spanish-language, and general-audience press to examine whether the themes and sentiments expressed in Black media coverage differ substantially from those in other outlets. These two kinds of analysis are linked to examine whether policy development and media coverage reinforce each other. They argue that the Black political and media elite does not view immigration as presenting an either/or choice; instead, they combine concerns about inter-group competition with perceptions of common interests across groups. This study advances scholarship by providing extensive new data on Black responses to immigration, by offering new insights into the dynamics of those reponses, and by connecting immigration-related developments in two important institutional sectors. More generally, this research sheds light on how "race matters" in American politics as democratic institutions respond to rapid demographic change. This study addresses the issue of how does race influences the politics of immigration; specifically the sociopolitical dilemma that Black elites can support restrictive immigration and decrease labor market competition from immigrants, or they can oppose restrictive immigration and strengthen political alliances with Latinos. It investigates the influence of race on immigration politics by looking at two institutional arenas: state legislative policymaking and the media. For the analyses of Black elite participation in immigration policymaking, the PIs construct a dataset on votes and sponsorship of state immigration legislation between 2005-2020. With these data, they estimate hierarchical models comparing Black legislative behavior with the legislative behavior of white and Latino representatives. They investigate how the race of the legislator and the racial composition of their constituency influence not only support for immigration policy, but also leadership roles in the initiation of new immigration policy proposals. For the analyses of whether and how race is related to media discourse on immigration policy, they create a database of immigration articles from 2005-2020 published in the Black press, the general audience press, and the Spanish language press. The comparison of the frames and themes that emerge from these sources is analyzed using big data procedures (topic modeling and sentiment analysis); these data and measures are used to assess the relationship between legislative behavior and media discourse on immigration. This research provides a new theoretical and empirical model to capture the dynamic relationship between race, legislative behavior, and media discourse across space and over time. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.